Sunday, December 11, 2016

Q and A on American English, Nigerian English, and Kenyan English

When I watch American soaps, they seem to care less
about tenses. Or maybe it’s something beyond me, I don’t know. For instance, a
typical dialogue goes like this: “Daughter: 'dad, do you snore ‘cause I do.
Dad: 'yeah you GET that from me'.”
Should not the “get” be GOT? Could
you clarify this for me please?

Answer:

Well, it's not true that Americans don't care about
tenses. They do. The example of the use of present tense in the dialogue you
cited is called the “historical present” in grammar. It's perfectly legitimate
even in British English. It's used to make a past event more vivid, or to
signal continuity between the past and the present.

In
conversational English, the historical present is particularly used with such
“verbs of communication” as “get” (as in, “OK, I get it: you’re a genius!”),
“forget” (as in, “I forget his name”), “tell” (as in, “your dad tells me you
want to talk to me”). Other verbs of communication that are expressed in the
historical present in speech are “write” and “say.”

I agree with you,
though, that Americans tend to use the historical present more often than the
British. Of course, the historical present is rarely used in Nigerian English,
except by our creative writers who deploy it in their fictional narratives.

In the hypothetical dialogue you cited, however, it
would be perfectly legitimate to replace “get” with “got.” In fact, in formal
contexts, “got” would be especially appropriate.

Question:

What’s the difference between “customer” and “client”?
Or are the words interchangeable?

Answer:

At one level,
“customer and “client” can mean the same thing. But careful writers and people
who show sensitivity to grammatical propriety often observe the finer semantic
nuances that exist between the words, as I will show shortly.

The American
Heritage Dictionary, one of the English-speaking world’s most respected
dictionaries, says both “customer” and “client” can denote “one that buys goods
or services.” But the dictionary nonetheless goes further and identifies five
other definitions for “client” that it does not associate with “customer.”

For instance, it says a client is: “the party for
which professional services are rendered, as by an attorney.” (Attorney is the
preferred word for “lawyer” in American English). It also says a client is “one that depends on
the protection of another.”

So, to put it crudely, a client is a “customer” with
whom you have a protective, continuing, often service-oriented, business
association. You may never know your
customers because they are usually transitory, informal, and professionally
unaffiliated with you, but your clients have a more or less permanent
professional relationship with you and, therefore, their trust and comfort must
be constantly won and re-won. They are consciously courted and sustained.

In general,
customers purchase goods and services and disperse—and may never come back.
Clients, on the other hand, do more than that; they often seek professional
advice and knowledge from businesses.

So lawyers, medical doctors, designers, etc. tend to
have clients rather than customers. Newspaper vendors, market women, etc., on
the hand, tend to have customers rather than clients.

Interestingly,
in Nigerian English a “customer” simultaneously refers to one who buys and one
who sells. That’s why both buyers and sellers call each other “customers” in
Nigerian markets!

Question:

Which
is the correct phrase: “at the weekend” or “on the weekend”?

Answer:

It
depends on what variety of English you are speaking. American English speakers
say “on the weekend” while British English speakers say “at the weekend.” New Zealanders say “in the weekend.”

I am
sure there are regional differences even within these varieties that conflate
these distinctions, by which I mean it’s entirely possible to find people, say
in the American south or the Appalachian, say “at the weekend” even though
that’s not mainstream in America, etc. But I was only pointing out the
differences in the standard, mainstream usages.

Question:

I’m
a frequent reader of your articles. Although I’m not a Nigerian I enjoy reading
different point of views wherever I can. I came across some of your write-ups
and I was inspired. Anyhow, I’m Kenyan by nationality. Our media, politicians
etc., have coined words that have left me confused. A particularly common one
is, “Kenyans have made up [their] mind.” For example, during political rallies,
depending on which political party is addressing contentious issues, a
politician standing in front of a mammoth crowd will declare "Kenyans have
made up [their] minds."

Of
course, our news media will repeat the same. So, I’m left thinking/wondering
what happens to the rest of Kenyans that don't buy into any political party’s
agenda? Do they become less Kenyans? Hopefully you get my drift.

Answer:

You
raise interesting questions about the deceitful use of language for political
purposes. This is not, however, limited to Kenya. It happens in Nigeria, too.
In fact, it happens everywhere in the world and, for that matter, in every
generation. George Orwell was the first notable person to call attention to
this type of language usage.

In his famous 1946 essay titled “Politics and
the English language,” Orwell said, “political speech and writing are largely
the defense of the indefensible.” This is
done, he pointed out, through staleness of imagery and lack of precision. The
expression “Kenyans have made up their minds” is certainly not only stale but
also fraudulently imprecise. No one, not least the politicians, have conducted
any scientific opinion poll to determine whether or not Kenyans have made up
their minds on any issue.

The
expression is intended only to anesthetize the Kenyan population into a false
sense of consensus with the points of views of the politicians making the
claims. But more than this, it’s also convenient and ready-made; it doesn’t
require any thinking to say it. Orwell identified three features of the
political language of his time: dying metaphors, verbal false limbs, and
pretentious diction. This is true of our time, too. The evidence can be found
in the example you cited.

Question:

Many
of the examples you give English usage errors are also found in other African
countries. One common English expression in Kenya that always drives me crazy
is: "he resulted to" instead of "he resorted to." What do
you think of the expression "he painted him to a corner?" This
expression drives me crazy, too. It is quite common in Kenyan English.

Answer:

I
have been thinking of doing an exploratory comparative analysis of “African
Englishes.” But the thought of the sheer labyrinthine complexity such an
undertaking would entail frightens me into impotence. You are now giving me the
inspiration to summon the pluck to do it.

But
these are my preliminary thoughts on your comments: It seems to me that we can
isolate and map African Englishes and show their similarities, differences, and
continuities. The varieties of English spoken in Kenya, Uganda, and Tanzania
seem to share enough similarities to warrant being grouped as "East
African English."

The
English spoken in Nigeria, Ghana, Sierra Leone, and the Gambia has
traditionally been labeled "West African English" in the scholarly
literature. For historical reasons,
Nigerian English and Ghanaian English are particularly sufficiently proximate
in lexis and structure to deserve being called close linguistic cousins.

Many,
perhaps most, of Ghana's high school English teachers in the 1960s were
Nigerians, and most of Nigeria's high school English teachers in the 1970s and
the 1980s were Ghanaians. (For instance, most of my English teachers in the
first two years of my high school education in Nigeria were Ghanaians).

So
it's easy to see why the varieties of English spoken in the two countries are
robustly similar. Liberian English, because of its American heritage, is a West
African outlier, although it has had a lot of Nigerian influence lately. Now Nigerian home movies appear to be
spreading Nigerian English across West Africa, perhaps across all of Anglophone
Africa.

I
know very little about Southern African English, i.e., the English spoken in
South Africa, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Namibia, etc. But I expect them to
share many similarities.

I
find your examples of Kenyan English usage interesting. Some of my British
grammarian friends tell me that the "result to/resort to" error is
also present in British English. I have also encountered it a number of times
in Nigerian newspapers. So it's not uniquely Kenyan. But it is completely
absent in American English, as far as I know, because Americans roll their r's
[“resort” is pronounced “resoRt”] and so don't have a reason to confuse
"resort" with "result."

To
"paint oneself or somebody into a corner," that is, to put oneself or
somebody in a difficult situation, is a time-honored American English idiom. So
the expression "he painted him into a corner" is legitimate. Kenyan
English only missed the preposition "in" in their version of the
idiom.

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About Me

Dr. Farooq Kperogi is a professor, journalist, newspaper columnist, author, and blogger based in Greater Atlanta, USA. He received his Ph.D. in communication from Georgia State University's Department of Communication where he taught journalism for 5 years and won the top Ph.D. student prize called the "Outstanding Academic Achievement in Graduate Studies Award." He earned his Master of Science degree in communication (with a minor in English) from the University of Louisiana at Lafayette and won the Outstanding Master's Student in Communication Award.

He earned his B.A. in Mass Communication (with minors in English and Political Science) from Bayero University, Kano, Nigeria, where he won the Nigerian Television Authority Prize for the Best Graduating Student.

Dr. Kperogi worked as a reporter and news editor, as a researcher/speech writer at the (Nigerian) President's office, and as a journalism lecturer at Kaduna Polytechnic and Ahmadu Bello University before relocating to the United States.

He was the Managing Editor of the Atlanta Review of Journalism History, a refereed academic journal. He was also Associate Director of Research at Georgia State University's Center for International Media Education (CIME).

He is currently an Associate Professor of Journalism and Emerging Media at the School of Communication and Media, Kennesaw State University, Georgia's fastest-growing and third largest university. (Kennesaw is a suburb of Atlanta). He also writes two weekly newspaper columns: "Notes From Atlanta" in the Abuja-based DailyTrust on Saturday (formerly Weekly Trust) and "Politics of Grammar" in the DailyTrust on Sunday (formerly Sunday Trust).

In April 2014 Dr. Kperogi was honored as the Outstanding Alumnus of the University of Louisiana's Department of Communication. His research has also won international awards, such as the 2016 Top-Rated Research Paper Award at the 17th Symposium on Online Journalism at the University of Texas, Austin, USA.